WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has denied a petition calling for a ban on the manufacture, use and processing of lead in fishing gear.

In a letter to the petitioners, EPA indicated that the petitioners have not demonstrated that the requested rule is necessary to protect against an unreasonable risk of injury to health or the environment, as required by the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). The letter further indicates that the increasing number of limitations on the use of lead fishing gear on some federal and state lands, as well as various education and outreach activities, call into question whether a national ban on lead in fishing gear would be the least burdensome, adequately protective approach to address the concern, as called for under TSCA. EPA's letter also notes that the prevalence of non-lead alternatives in the marketplace continues to increase.
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ESPN Inc., announced Tuesday that it has finalized the sale of BASS, LLC to a group of investors including Don Logan, Jerry McKinnis and Jim Copeland. An agreement in principle was announced in August by ESPN and the transaction was completed Monday.

BASS is the largest membership organization of bass anglers in the U.S.
with more than 500,000 members. It was purchased by ESPN in 2001 and includes several media platforms, including three magazines and a popular web site. The investor group is a powerful combination of business acumen and superior knowledge of the outdoors industry.
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The announcement of a completely revamped website was made at the 2010 State Tournament and aside from a few minor things, the checklist was complete enough to roll out the new design.

Couple of things to note before you email the webmaster;

Old Articles not on new website - I am aware of this and am actively working to convert all ~200 articles but having to do them all by hand, is going to take some time

User Accounts - The new site will make full use of individual MOBASS.com web accounts but for the moment, registering accounts have been disabled

Using Facebook instead of creating a new account - see User Accounts

Photo Gallery - I've been un-sucessfull in locating a photo gallery module for the new website that is user friendly (and free) so I've upgraded our Flickr account to Pro which allows larger images, more of them, and the ability to display all albums (check em out, there's quite a few up there now)

Sponsor banners - I'm taking the lists straight from Bassmaster.com for National Sponsors, and will be updating a similar State Sponsors column once I get the approval from the State President

There are a number of other things still on my ToDo List but I made a promise to roll out the new website before the end of October and since I'll be unavailable til November 2nd, I wanted to make good on my promise - and so here's the new MOBASS.com

One last item, should you notice something completely out of whack, a link that doesn't lead anywhere, or anything that should be addressed, send me an email

Still working on a way to convert the database dating from 2006 over to the new format but apparently no such software exists so I'll be doing this by hand...all 209 articles! (yeah, that might have to wait till after the roll-out).

Additionally, some have asked for a preview and normally I'd be happy to oblige but certain features are not ready for viewing and I'd hate to spoil the surprise since I'm going to roll this out in a couple days. So, thanks for the inquiries, but unfortunately you'll have to wait!

"On August 23, 2010, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was petitioned by the Center for Biological Diversity and others to ban lead from ammunition and fishing tackle, including sinkers, jigs, weighted fly lines and components containing lead, such as brass and ballast in lures, spinners, stick baits and other fishing products.

On August 27, the EPA denied the petition regarding ammunition, but let stand the petition to ban lead in fishing tackle and has opened a short period for taking public comment."

A big THANKS to all of you who were able to contribute to the going away gift we presented to Chris Horton last week at the angler-biologist meeting in Texas. Thanks to James Hall at BASS and Chris' wife Kim, we found out that Chris wanted a very specific waterfowl weapon to
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